Releases:120a1

It is important to understand that 1.2.0 alpha 1 is an alpha release. This means that things will behave strangely. Before downloading the build, you should at least read the "known issues" section in these notes.

In most cases, there should be no problem running versions 1.1.1 and 1.2.0 on the same system. They will not interfere with each other's files. You can find download links for 1.2.0 at the bottom of this page.

These notes are under construction and may be incomplete. Further, the notes describe, as of now, an alpha version of a coming release. The final release might be different from what is described below.

"MakeHuman Community 1.2.0" is a major update of the underlying code, where the focus has been to replace outdated dependencies and modernize the system. Further, a shift in focus has been made to position MakeHuman as a shared tool serving the larger community through integrated access to third party assets and extended functionality.

There is a new PPA for ubuntu. This PPA also offers builds of plugins.

Using Jupyter for the shell utility, if available on the system (currently not working for MakeHuman windows builds)

Known issues

FBX skeleton will still misbehave

There are still graphics card incompatibilities in the OpenGL code. On several graphics cards you may get no visible output whatsoever, rendering the application unusable. If this happens, please report what operating system and what graphics card you are using so we can investigate it further.

There is no build for OSX

The user data folder is still makehuman/v1py3 rather than makehuman/v1, in order to guarrantee that the development version does not interfere with the stable version. This will probably be changed for the final release.

The new blender importer will crash when used in a version of blender that is shipped with ubuntu 18.04. It works fine on ubuntu 18.04 if using a blender that is downloaded from blender's homepage though. Investigations are pending.

The initial sync for the asset downloader will take a very long time to finish, and it might look as if it finished despite the files still being processed in the background

Upgrading

This version uses the same file formats as 1.1.x in almost all cases. The only exception is MHM files (which are produced when clicking "save model" in MakeHuman). 1.2.x is able to open MHM files produced in 1.1.x, and the result will look exactly the same as in 1.1.x. However, 1.1.x will not be able to open MHM files saved by 1.2.x.

For all other assets, things should work the same and look the same in both versions, using the same files.

Running from source

If you want to run MakeHuman directly from source (rather than downloading a binary build), you will have to replace almost all dependencies. It is also possible that not all dependencies will install smoothly beside the dependencies for 1.1.x.

The following are the minimum required dependency versions for MakeHuman Community 1.2.0:

Python: 3.6.4 or higher

PyQt: 5.10.0 or higher

NumPy: 1.13.0 or higher

PyOpenGL: Any modern version will work, including the one used for MakeHuman 1.1.x

Ubuntu

In order to fulfill the minimum dependency requirements listed above, you will need Ubuntu 18.04 or later. For earlier Ubuntu versions, you would have use backports of the dependencies, as they are not available in the default installation.

The upgraded codebase

The main focus of this release has been to modernize the code. In the prior version, large parts were written more than eight years ago, and relied on libraries and code structures which are no longer functional in a modern context. More in detail:

The system was written for python 2.6 and then upgraded when needed to python 2.7. The expected end of life for python 2.7 is in less than two years.

The user interface was implemented in Qt4, via PyQt4. Both Qt4 and PyQt4 got deprecated years ago, and Riverside (the authors of PyQt) removed all PyQt4 windows binaries, meaning we could no longer provide windows builds.

Thus, the need to bring the code up to modern times became critical. We realized that the system would soon not be possible to run or develop on several platforms.

Going through the code to update it has taken some considerable time (years actually), but it has had the added benefit that we have also reviewed almost all sections of the code and fixed a lot of minor
bugs and glitches.

Most users will probably not notice much difference: the user interfaces in 1.2.0 and 1.1.1 are almost identical. But it was work that needed to be done before we could move forward with implementing new features.

Asset downloader

The asset downloader

This version of MakeHuman bundles the asset downloader plugin. By using this you can access all the hundreds of user contributed assets that are available via the MakeHuman Community.

Within the UI you can search for assets, show screenshots, read about details and download. Downloaded assets are automatically placed in your local asset directory so that you can
immediately go to the geometries tabs and, for example, equip the newly downloaded clothes.

New blender integration

One click import directly from MakeHuman

Convert to IK rig

This release bundles a rich set of blender functionalitites, which can be added to blender in the form of an addon. Not all functionality will be listed here, but the following are
some highlights.

Import directly from MakeHuman

In blender it is now possible to fetch a toon directly from a running instance of MakeHuman, without having to first save the toon to a file. The importer will talk with the makehuman instance
and fetch all meshes (such as the body, hair clothes...), materials, rigs and poses. The process is almost instantaneous (a toon with a lot of clothes might take a few seconds to import).

The importer UI supports a wide range of settings and presets. By using a preset you can, for example, import a body mesh suitable for using together with MakeClothes. This will make it significantly easier
to develop assets aimed at a specific body type.

Note that for the importer to work, you will have to go to the Community -> Socket tab in MakeHuman and enable "Accept connections". Otherwise MakeHuman won't answer, and you will get an error in Blender.

IK and amputations

The importer will use the skeleton set in MakeHuman to rig the resulting character in Blender. The rig can then be extended with the "IK rig" functionality: By clicking a button you can get extra
IK controls, and IK chains set up for arms, legs and fingers.

Rigs can also be amputated in case detailed bones are not required.

All rigs currently available to MakeHuman are supported.

Kinect

To be written

A new windows installer

The windows version is now distributed as an executable installer that supports uninstall. After installing MakeHuman, it can now be found on the start menu like all other normal windows application.

Note that it is no longer recommended to go to the installation folder and start MakeHuman manually there. In order to do so, you would have to manually set up an environment for python, something
which is handled automatically by the start menu entry.

Other bundled functionality

Apart from the above, some other functionality that previously had to be downloaded separately is now bundled:

MHX2

MHX2 is now enabled per default in MakeHuman. The blender side of MHX2 is bundled as a zip file which can
be added to blender via the user preferences.

MHAPI

MHAPI (a library with convenience calls for making addons for MakeHuman) is now included and enabled per default.